North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Naomi" <dragon-star@cableone.net>]

It was the Gravenstein.  The others were okay.

 

I never thought of putting them in the bag in the fridge.

Naomi

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From: nafex-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:nafex-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Nathan Torgerson
Sent: Tuesday, June 07, 2005 10:29 PM
To: North American Fruit Explorers
Subject: RE: [NAFEX] Bagging Apples Experiment - Questions

I have used the Baggies brand with twist-ties for four years with success (no cuts in the bags, but if water does collect in them, which happen to a few a year, I cut the corners slightly to drain the water.   I haven't been able to grow my apples as big as Naomi's, so I haven't had any bags break  :)    As mentioned by others, the advantage of using clear bags is that you don't remove the bags to ripen the apples, just pick them, bag and all, when they are ready and put 'em in the fridge.  

I usually try to bag as soon as the apples are big enough to hold a bag (the size of a dime, sometimes even smaller).  This year I bagged half my apples (about 50) on June 1st, which was later than I hoped (Zone 4 Minnesota).  While bagging I noticed that almost all of the apples were clean.  I finished my bagging on June 3rd, but by that time about 70% of the remaining unbagged apples had been damaged by plum curculio egg laying. Fortunately I had left the parts of the tree that needed thinning for last (due to laziness), so I was able to salvage enough of the remaining apples, picking off the ones that had been damaged. Does anyone know how bad a single plum curculio bite damages an apple? I've read that if the apple stays on the tree that the larvae die anyway because apples are too firm for them...but I wasn't going to waste time bagging it if it was already damaged.

All the articles I've read talk about bagging to help against the apple maggot (which shows up later) and post-blossoming codling moths attacks, but I hadn't heard anyone mention bagging to protect against plum curculio damage. It works if you bag early enough.  I bagged my pears this year for that reason. (Last year the handful of pears I ripened well).

Nate

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